A.J. DeRosa is the founder of Project Upland — a multi-media operation that produces, in addition to video and web-based content, a quarterly, subscription-based premium print magazine. He’s also the author of the deer hunting cult-classic, The Urban Deer Complex. An accomplished hunter, rabid conservationist, and success in the hunting industry, he is not your typical hunter.
Whether it's his politics, which are woven as a through-line throughout his unique positions, or his insistence on activism as a key component of conservation, he occupies a space adjacent — and sometimes quite antithetical — to those typified by what could be seen as an often monolithic mindset amongst those that hunt or fish.
Daniel is someone who’s often felt like an outsider in the world of hunting, frequently expressing views that run counter to those of his fellow outdoorsman, and A.J. is altogether more revolutionary in his approach.
When we first met and heard him speak, it was a surprisingly refreshing, if not sometimes challenging, stream of consciousness we hadn’t heard expressed in hunting circles before.
Being some 6% or less of the American public, those of us that hunt, understandably, have more often than not, chosen to silo ourselves and as a result, have suffered from a kind of slow progress with respect to the rest of the public at large.
But A.J. is different. Different than any hunter or conservationist Daniel has sat down with yet. Don’t expect a rehashing of the same old talking points here. He’s not that guy. But, he might just be the foreshadowing of the voice of the future hunter. As a new generation inherits the 3 million-year-old tradition, they bring to it new ideas, paradigms, ways of viewing the world, ecology, our predatory presence in it, and our place in the grand scheme of ecological diversity.
Change is scary, and often easier to resist than embrace. A lot of us behave like a dog on a leash. Pull back too much, and the dog feels the urge to push forward against the pressure. That’s the knee-jerk response a lot of the hunting world has taken to the changing cultural, economic, scientific, and ecological landscape we are encountering in this rapidly evolving decade and the ones preceding it. We dig in and resist change.
But this is, in our opinion, the wrong approach. At least, it’s an approach that always seems to — eventually — give way to progress regardless. So, if you hear ideas expressed here today that run counter to those you hear at the range, hunting box store, or in hunting camp, know you are, most likely, hearing the voice of the future. However threatening to status quo it might be.
Resistance is, after all, futile. We’ll all be assimilated. Seriously though, change is coming, it’s inevitable. And what is most important isn’t the way we have been doing it, but rather, preserving our relationship to the natural world. Let’s welcome all ideas, even the radical ones. Even the ones that scare us. Even the ones that challenge our most closely held illusions. If we don’t, the world will surely pass us by. If we can’t thread the needle of holding onto what we cherish and allowing ourselves to adapt to change, we — as hunters — might just go the way of the passenger pigeon.
Change is coming. How will we adapt?
View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/172
